Bold, fresh ideas? Not so much. The debate was more like an 80’s flashback, according to Rubio.

“The biggest threat to her [Hillary Clinton‘s] candidacy is her outdated ideas. If you watched that debate last night it looked like something from the early ’80s. It was basically a liberal vs. liberal debate about who was going to give away the most free stuff,” said Rubio.

“Free college education, free college education for people illegally in this country, free health care, free everything. Their answer to every problem in America is a government program and a tax increase. That’s all they prescribe time and time again. This is stuff from the ’80s, the mid ’80s, and we’re back there. As I said before the debate, it became exactly what I predicted it would be: a race to the left to see who’d be the most radically liberal, the most big government. And that’s what this whole primary is going to be for the Democratic side.”

Watching the debate last night, our observations were congruent with Sen. Rubio’s. Democratic solutions to everything seems to be simple — make _____ free. Of course those of us who understand numbers, math, and budgets know nothing is “free.”

At the last count, Sanders’ “free” programs had a hefty price tag of $18 trillion. Yes, that’s trillion, with a T. Sanders also seemed to be under the impression that mirroring the social programs of a country with a population the size of the Houston metroplex is good economic policy.

Meanwhile, Hillary had no answer to how her “free” gimmes would be funded. Debate moderator Dana Bash asked Clinton if her family leave proposal was just another tax-payer funded, big government program to which Hillary responded, BUT PLANNED PARENTHOOD.

Senator Amnesty is worried about a return to stupid, counter-productive policies of the mid-1980’s — like the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty law, perhaps? (Except on a much bigger scale this time, right Marco? “New and improved amnesty! Now with even more welfare and benefits fraud!”)

But Kemberly, didn’t you listen to hitlery? She’s going to make the wealthy pay for it.
It’s like….. free!!!
And those evil rich people will be forced to buy me free stuff!!
“hitlery is going to pay my gas bill out of her stash!!”

Unless of course you consider cranking up the printing presses and throwing money at things a solution.

Apparently, some of them really do consider it a solution. It’s hard to believe anyone could be so dumb, but there it is. (Nobody has ever seriously argued that universal suffrage is actually a good idea, and this is one of the reasons why.)

A government can generate money via printing press, but it can’t generate wealth that way.

I mean, jeebuz, even Marx understood that. All of this “free” stuff requires the expenditure of materiel and labor; and where is that going to come from?